


fill me from the crown to the toe top-full with direst cruelty

by borrowedtime



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Post Season Four, Rachel nO, Rachel whY, the usual basically, what of it, yes that is a lady macbeth reference in the title
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 02:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9636275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borrowedtime/pseuds/borrowedtime
Summary: Rachel Duncan post season four; ‘you can’t fault a creation for believing in it’s own perfection if you coat her in shining gold and call her one of a kind.’





	

Of course, what could they expect? Rachel Duncan was not raised to be merciful, soft, pliant. DYAD had needed a successor, and they received one, soaked in blood and armed with a sweet smile; ready. Rachel wasn’t sure why Sarah thought that begging her, you’re one of us, would make any difference to the blonde clone.

There was only one Rachel Duncan, and there would only ever be one.

So, power drunk and lips painted crimson, Rachel gave herself a respite after the board meeting. A glass of wine, seated on a leather settee, fire crackling in the distance. She was raised for this, she knew what she was doing, she had grown up to be cutthroat and to strangle people with her bare hands.

(Or maybe she was born this way).

She remembered Leekie, after she had told him he had no use to her anymore, with his shocked face. It was unattractive, the way he seemed to think the fact that he raised her would have any sway in a business decision. It was one of the few times she’d seem him frightened by her apathy. She had felt cool, and antiseptic.

(She bit back bitter words that burned in her throat when she had dismissed him; why are so fond of, so obsessed with, clones who are not me? What are they compared to me?)

Rachel had read about a woman who convinced her husband into power and then was driven mad by regret. The consequences had driven Lady Macbeth out of her mind, and whilst Rachel appreciated the nuance of Shakespearean literature, she had not understood why the other woman threw herself from the highest tower she could find. Had the Lady not gotten everything she wanted?

(She supposed not everyone was ready to face the aftermath of hands soaked with blood like it was water).

Susan had said there had been necessary sacrifices, and so Rachel had learned. All of this was necessary for the science, for the power, did they not understand? Susan sneering in her face that she regretted making her was a folly, everything would be advanced. Her goal would be reached, Rachel’s mission completed.

Sometimes, Rachel wished, an unspoken wish that burnt her tongue so badly she would never speak it aloud, for the family she thought could’ve had. Susan Duncan had ruined all of that, abandoning her, for the science. So Rachel had stabbed her mother in the chest, white clothing soaked a diluted red, for the science.

(She wasn’t sure how her mother could regret making her greatest masterpiece, her Mona Lisa).

And then was her father. The one who had forced her to watch him die, to live without him (again). It was stupid of her, to reform that familial attachment so quickly and to love him again. Stupid, stupid, stupid. That’s what she told herself while she gulped at a martini and laughed hysterically, with a smile as bitter as the olives in her drink. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

(Every priceless ornament has their one flaw, their one cracked piece. It gives character.)

‘Don’t tell me you’re becoming one of them,’ Ferdinand had said to her. One of what? She had the urge to ask, only settling hitting him viciously with her cane as a response. Did nobody understand that she was raised for this? This was her purpose, her only purpose. She would hold onto it with dirtied fingernails and poison settled in her chest.

Ferdinand was a means to an end, though, so she did not quibble on his opinions for very long. He had grown into his purpose, finding it like one finds their favourite song. By chance. She was predestined, the chosen one, the only self aware clone out of the LEDA project.

(You can’t fault a creation for believing in it’s own perfection if you coat her in shining gold and call her one of a kind, over and over and over.)

And there was Sarah. Sarah Manning. The wild card. The creature born purely of chance. The one everyone seemed to be ripping themselves to pieces over. Leekie wanted Sarah, Susan wanted her.

Apparently, Rachel paled in comparison to a woman made of eyeliner and rough, deep anger.

‘Your obsession with Sarah Manning has blinded you,’ Susan had said to her once. How Rachel had wanted to scoff, to spit fire into the face of her creator. She wanted to snarl: me? You’re the ones who told me I was special enough to be the only one, and then threw yourselves at the feet of the one who should have never gotten away?

But she didn’t snarl, she didn’t scream anything. Instead, later, she revelled in Sarah’s panicked expression and the blood making pools on the floor. It turned out that knives were becoming a habit for Rachel. The creature of chance would fall to the creature of fate, or at least she would be left to die somewhere in the woods while Rachel sipped on expensive wine.

Sarah had beaten her once, a permanence and a reminder left with Rachel in the stutter of her hands and slowing of her speech in the midst of a sentence. Sarah would never beat her again.

(She would never tell another living soul, if they ever dared ask, but she never missed. Rachel had been trained to protect herself when she turned eighteen. She had turned out to be quite the accomplished marksman, even now with her robotic eye. When she fired that pistol, and it did not hit Sarah Manning square in the chest, there was one thought reverberating inside Rachel’s brain. She never missed.)

Rachel sat there, enjoying the stillness and the way the wine curled on the back of her tongue. It felt like winning, it felt like power. It felt, almost, like enough.

**Author's Note:**

> also on tumblr: morgana-pendragonss


End file.
